"Abraham Lincoln" : address of Hon. J.P. Dolliver at the annual banquet, Chamber of Commerce of Pittsburgh, February 12, 1908

"ABRAHAM LINCOLN"

Address of Hon. J. P. Dolliver

United Stales Senator from Iowa

AT THE

Annual Banquet
Chamber of Commerce of Pittsburgh

FEBRUARY 12, 1908

Digitized by tiie Internet Arciiive

in 2010 witii funding from

Tiie Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant

http://www.archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnadOOdoll

ADDRESS OF SENATOR DOLLIVER

Gentlemen of the Chamber of Commerce of Pitts-
burgh :

IT is a very great pleasure to me to have the opportunity
again of visiting this goodly city and enjoying the hos-
pitality of its people. I have had for a good many
years the pleasure of an intimate association with the dis-
tinguished men who have spoken for Pittsburgh in the Na-
tional Councils. For about twenty years, with John
Dalzell (great applause) who never lost an opportunity to
serve the people of the United States by serving the great
industrial interests of your community. With my friend
from the other side of the river, Brother Graham, (ap-
plause) who made himself famous the first day in the
House of Representatives by a speech on the resources of
Pittsburgh that read in the Record almost like an astronom-
ical calculation. (Applause.)

Nor need I speak of Burke and Barchfeld, and I certainly
have no need here to say a word in apology of the Sen-
ator whom Pittsburgh has contributed to the public life
of our times. (Great applause.) I reckon I have known
him longer than any of you, because we were boys together
upon the Monongahela towards the mountains of West Vir-
ginia, where we both cropped out. We went to school to-
gether and I have loved him from childhood. He had hard
luck in the institution of learning which we were attending.

They separated him from the pursuit of knowledge and sent
him home. I have always sympathized with him about that.
We were together that night. They caught him. In the con-
fusion I escaped. (Great applause.) And you need not a
word from me to show that from those good old times I
have followed him and have joined with you in honoring him
as one of the great lawyers, the greatest, I think, of our At-
torney Generals, and now one of our greatest and most hon-
ored Senators. (Prolonged applause.)

You have asked me to do a very hard thing — ^to speak
about Abraham Lincoln. I do not know how I will make out
with a theme like that. He did not live very long in this
world, less than sixty years, and only ten years of that time
visible above the dead level of our affairs. And yet into that
ten years were crowded events so far-reaching and stu-
pendous in their ultimate significance that to this day we can
hardly pick up the book which records them without a
strange feeling coming over us that maybe, after all, we are
not reading about a man at all, but about some sublime,
automatic figure in the hands of the infinite power being
used to help and to bless the human race. (Applause.)

I have heard some men say that he was a great lawyer.
I do not think he was anything of the kind. It is true that
he had a mind peculiarly adapted to understand the prin-
ciples of the common law, and his faculties appear so normal
that he did not need a commentary nor a copy of the Mad-
ison papers, thumb-marked by the doubts and fears of three
or four generations, to enable him to see that the men who
made the Constitution of the United States were building
for eternity. (Applause.)

And yet he practiced law without a library and every-
body who knew him knew that he was of absolutely no ac-
count in a lawsuit unless he knew that right was on his side.

It seemed to have gone against his intellectual, as well as
his moral grain, that curious precept of Lord Bacon's that a
man cannot tell whether a cause is good or bad until the
jury has brought in the verdict. (Laughter.) The old
judicial circuit about Springfield, where he used to practice
law, where he called everybody by their first name, and
everybody loved to hear him talk, did much for him in many
ways. But the eminent jurists who surround those who are
with us tonight will agree with me that a man who has not
the foresight to exact a retainer, nor the energy to collect a
fee after he has earned it, such a man, whatever else may
be said of him, is not by nature cut out for a lawyer. (Great
laughter. )

I have talked with various of the lawyers who practiced
with him on that circuit, and from what I have heard them
say I have come to the conclusion that even then the notion
was slowly forming in his mind that he held a brief with
power of attorney from on high for the unnumbered mil-
lions of his fellow men and was only loitering about the
county seats of Illinois until the case came on for trial.

There are some who say that he was a great orator. If
that is so, the standard of the schools, ancient and modern,
must be thrown away. Maybe they ought to be.
(Laughter.) And if they are, this circuit rider of the law,
refreshing his companions with wit and wisdom from
the well of English undefiled, this champion of civil
Hberty, confuting the Douglas with remorseless logic, with
homely phrases enriched by proverbial literature, this advo-
cate of the people standing head and shoulders above his
brethren, presenting their case at the bar of history in sen-
tences so simple that a child can follow them, such a one
will surely not be denied a place among the masteirs who
have added something to the triumphs of the mother tongue.

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He was disappointed in the little speech he made at Gettys-
burg and he said that the oration of Mr. Everett was the
best thing he had ever heard. But Mr. Everett himself
without a moment for reflection perceived that that little
piece of crumpled paper which he held in his hand that day
would be treasured from generation to generation long after
his own laborious utterance had been forgotten.

The old school of oratory and the new met that day
under the trees and among the groves and congratulated one
another. They have not met very often since, for both of
them have been pushed aside to make room for the essayists,
the declaimers, the statistician and the whole tribe of ped-
dlers of intellectual wares who have descended like a
swarm on all human deliberations. (Great laughter and
applause.)

I have heard it said that he was a great statesman. If
by that you mean that he was better educated than other
people, that he understood better than anybody else the
party policy of the political organization to which he was
attached nearly all his life, there is very little evidence of
that at all. He followed the fortunes of the old Whig
party through evil as well as good report. He stumped the
county and afterwards the state, but neither he nor any-
body else thought the speeches which he made important
enough to be recorded. He had a very simple platform from
the start : "I am a believer in a National Bank, in the system
of internal improvements, and in a high protective tariff."
(Applause.) Half his lifetime he followed Henry Clay
more like a lover than a disciple, and yet when the great
popular leader died and Mr. Lincoln was invited to make a
memorial address at the old state house in Springfield, he
had not a word to say about the principles of the old party
creed, but he devoted every moment of his time to a consid-

eration of that love for humanity and that devotion to liberty
which shone even to the end in that superb career of Henry
Clay. (Applause.) When you describe Abraham Lincoln
as a statesman you open no secret of his biography. You
rather degrade the epic grandeur of the drama in which he
moved. Of course, he was a statesman. Exactly so Paul of
Tarsus setting out from Damascus became afterwards a cel-
ebrated traveler, and Christopher Columbus, inheriting a
taste for the sea, gradually developed to be a mariner of
more than local repute. (Laughter.)

I have heard it said by people who claim to have stud-
ied the official record of the Confederate and Union armies,
that Abraham Lincoln was a rare military genius, better
able than his generals to order the movements of great
armies. I do not believe that that is so. He got into the
War Department by the exigencies of the times, and if he
towered above the ill-fitting uniforms which made their way
by a process of honor to places of high command in the
earlier years of the Civil War, it is no matter of praise after
all. But this must be said, he understood better than any-
body else the size of the undertaking in which he was en-
gaged. And he watched until his eyes were weary for some-
body that could grasp the situation and make out of the
army what he knew was in it. It almost broke his
heart, this constant quarreling among the officers about
matters that were for the most part unintelligible to
the outside world. When he passed the command of the
army of the Potomac over to Hooker, he did it in terms of
reprimand and admonition that read almost like a father's
last warning to a wayward son. He told him he had abused
the confidence of his country. He had wronged his fellow
officers, and referring to Hooker's insubordinate suggestion
that the army and the government both needed a dictator.

he called his attention to the fact that only generals who
won victories could set up dictatorships and then he added
with a humor, grim as death: "You go and win victories,
and I will risk the dictatorship." If General Hooker did
not tear up his commission when he got that letter it only
showed that he had moral heroism that could bear the sever-
ity of the naked truth.

Yet all the while Mr. Lincoln was looking and at last
he got his eye upon a man of the west who seemed to be
doing a fairly good military business down in Tennessee, a
copious worker and fighter, but not a very copious writer,
as he said afterwards in a telegram to Burnside. And
he liked the looks of this man. He always seemed
to square the event with his plans. He never "Re-
gretted to report," and accordingly when Vicksburg had
fallen and Gettysburg had been fought and the tide
of invasion had been rolled back from the borders of
Maryland and Pennsylvania, he wrote two letters, one
to General Meade, reproving him in harsh terms for failing
to follow up the Gettysburg victory, and the other to Gen-
eral Grant, asking him to report immediately at Washington
for duty. (Applause.) The letter to General Meade, which
now is resting quietly in Mr. Nicolay's collection of the
writings of Lincoln, all the fire of its wrath long since gone
out, was never sent. But General Grant got his. And from
that hour we heard no more of military orders from the
White House, not even exhortations to move upon the
enemy's works. He left it all to the new commander. He
did not give up his own ideas of how the job ought to be
done, but he never even ventured to ask General Grant to
tell him how he thought it ought to be done. He left it all
to him. And as the plan of the great captain unfolded he
sent from Washington to the headquarters in Virginia this

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exultant message: "I begin to see it. You will succeed.
God bless you all. A. Lincoln." (Applause.) And so
these two, each adding something to the other's fame, go
down to history together, God's blessing falling like a gentle
benediction upon the memory of both. (Applause.)

While he lived very few people seemed to be able to
understand him. Mr. Seward, the most able member of his
cabinet, insulted him. Mr, Stanton, afterwards known as
the organizer of victory, wrote a mean letter about him
after Bull Run to James Buchanan, then living quietly at
his country seat at Wheatland, near the Capitol. From the
old office of the Tribune of the Common people, where for
more than a generation Mr. Greeley exercised an influence
now unknown in the American newspaper world, came a let-
ter filled with a curious mixture of enterprise and de-
spair, a despair that, after seven sleepless nights, had given
up the fight, the kind of enterprise still noticeable in the
newspaper world which desired to have the first notice of
the inevitable surrender that he thought was coming on.
"You are not considered a great man," he wrote to the
President's eye alone. Who is this sitting on an old worn
out sofa in the pubHc offices of the White House just after
the battle near Washington, receiving deputations from the
Military and Civil branches of the government, including
scared Congressmen, as they poured across the long bridge
from Virginia to tell their tale of woe to the only man in
Washington that had patience enough left to listen to them?
Is it the log cabin student who learned to read lying in front
of the fireplace in the cabin in the woods of Indiana? It is
he. Is it the country lawyer traveling about from one
county seat to another airing his views before the Court
Houses with no baggage except a saddle bag containing
a clean shirt and a code of Illinois ? It is he. Is it the ad-

venturous voyager of the Alississippi River who got ideas
of lifting flatboats over riffles as he tried to navigate an un-
certain channel and ideas broad as the skies for lifting na-
tions out of barbarism, as he traced the divine image
in the faces of men and women put up at auction in the
slave market of New Orleans ? It is he. Is it the awkward
farm boy of the old Sangamon, who covered up his bare
feet in the fresh dirt at the end of the furrow in order not
to get them sunburned as he rested for a few moments to
refresh himself with old books that he had borrowed from
neighbors? It is he. Is it the daring debater blazing out
for a moment in the momentous warning, "a house divided
against itself cannot stand," and then falling back with the
defenses of the constitution in order that the cause of lib-
erty, already hindered by the folly of its friends, might not
become an outlaw in the land? It is he. Is it the weary
traveler setting out for the Capitol bidding his friends
good-bye and begging their prayers while he talked to them
in a mysterious way about One who could go with him and
stay with them and be everywhere for good ? It is he.

They said that he laughed that night on the sofa in
the public offices of the White House. And they told
strange stories about bow he looked, and the comic papers
of London and New York made brutal pictures of
his big hands — hands that were about to be stretched
out to save the civilization of the world ; of his over-
grown feet — feet that for four torn and bleeding years were
not weary in the service of the human race. They said
that his clothes did not fit him — that he was awkward and
ungainly in his appearance, and more than one of them re-
called the courtly graces of manner that had been brought
home from St. James and they began to say that this being
a backwoodsman was no longer a recommendation for the

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Presidency of the United States. Little did they understand
how soon the time would come when that rude cabin on the
edge of the hill country in Kentucky would be transfigured
by the tender imagination of the people until it became more
stately than the White House, more royal than all the pal-
aces of the earth. It did not shelter the childhood of a king,
but there is one thing in the world at least, more royal than
a king; it is a man. (Great applause.)

And so they said he jested and looked strangely from
one to another in the crowd. They did not know him or they
might have seen that he was not looking at the crowd at all ;
that he was girding his immortal spirit for his ordeal, and if
he laughed, how did they know that he did not hear the
cheerful voices from above. For he certainly had been
taught that he that sitteth in the heavens sometimes laughs
and holds in derision the impotent plans of men to turn
aside the everlasting purposes of God. (Applause.) The
whole world now knows his stature. By the light of the
campfires of victorious armies his countrymen at last found
out how to size up his gigantic figure, how to assess his
character, how to comprehend the majesty of his conscience.
And when finally the nation bore him affectionately towards
the grave, through their tears they saw him exalted above
all thrones in the affections of the human race.

We sometimes speak of the Civil War as an affair of
armies, for we are a military people, and our tendency in
that direction needs no cultivation — or at least very little.
And yet it requires no very keen insight into the hidden
things of history to see that this conflict was not waged on
fields of battle, was not between armed forces, was not
under the walls of besieged cities. It was not even the
fight of his own country or of a passing generation. And

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the thing that made Abraham Lincoln greater than all his
generals, greater than all his admirals, greater than all the
armies that answered his proclamation, was the simple fact
that he bore the ark of the covenant. He had his alliance
with the Lord of Hosts. The stars in their courses were
fighting for him with infinite reinforcement at his call. His
battle was not in the wilderness of Virginia, the fight was
not in the woods around the old church at Shiloh. It
was not against insurrection of the slave power; he
was hand to hand with a rebellion older than human sel-
fishness and greed ; a rebellion that for centuries had made
the government of the world a mere succession of despotisms,
a dull recital of the failures and misfortunes of mankind.
And so he was caught up like Ezekiel of old, the Prophet
of Israel, and stood at the east gate of the Lord's house, and
when he heard it said unto him, these are the men
who devise mischief, he understood what the vision
meant. For no man who ever lived in this world
knew better than he what this endless mysterious strug-
gle of our poor fallen humanity is and how the Ameri-
can Republic had fallen away from its duty and from
its opportunity. All his lifetime he had heard ringing
in his ears a little sentence taken from an old docu-
ment that had been passed along carelessly from one Fourth
of July celebration to another for nearly a century, "All men
are created equal." To Abraham Lincoln that sounded
strangely like an answer to a question asked by one of the
eldest of the Hebrew Sages, 'Tf I despise the cause of my
man servant or my maid servant when he contendeth with
me, what shall I do when God riseth up? Did not he that
made me make him, and did not One fashion us in the
womb?" Did not he that made me make him? A strategic

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question that has got to be answered right before democ-
racy or any other form of civil Hberty can make any fur-
ther headway in this world. (Applause.) All men are
created equal, yet he had heard that sentence, touching the
foundations of the world as it does, ridiculed, and ex-
plained away. And it was his mission to come to its
defense. He took the manuscript of Thomas Jefferson
and saved it permanently from obloquy and contempt. He
explained exactly what our ancestors meant when they
founded this institution and therein he reached the spiritual
height, the mountain top, from which he sent down to his
countrymen that inspiring message, "The war for the Union
is the people's conflict to make certain whether there shall be
preserved in this world that form and substance of govern-
ment the object of which is to remove the obstacles from
the pathway of all, to open the avenues of honorable employ-
ment for all, and to give to all an unfettered start and a fair
chance in the race of life." (Applause.)

I thank God that the war for the Union ended as it did.
That we are one people, with one hope, and one history, and
one destiny among the nations and in the midst of the ages.
At bottom our political faith in the United States is really
the same faith. As Democrats we repeat the words of
Thomas Jefferson, "Equal rights to all ;" as Republicans we
treasure the words of Abraham Lincoln, "An unfettered
start and a fair chance in the race of life." Nor is
the day very far off when the American people shall
lay up in grateful hearts the blunt and fearless platform of
Theodore Roosevelt, "A fair deal." (Tremendous ap-
plause. ) A square deal for every man, no more, no less. The
doctrine is the same. And if it is not so, there is no founda-
tion at all for institutions such as ours. But it is everlast-

II

ingly true, and by the blood of Abraham Lincoln the Amer-
ican people, without regard to political party, swear to make
that good for all men and for all the future ages of the
history of the American Republic. (Great and prolonged
applause. )

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